If I owned a calendar, its December through April would be stained with tears. The square where Dec. 16, 2023, lands would have angry-looking ink blotches on it — to represent how I felt on my 25th birthday. My ex-girlfriend and I broke up on that day. I cursed her…
Wandering the Lines — Sherry Toh
Sherry “Elisa” Toh (she/they) is a journalist who lives in sunny Singapore. Her diagnosis of SMA type II was in 1999 at 13 months old. Kyphoscoliosis and chronic neuropathy later developed as complications. As a hopeless romantic, her loves include fairy tales, tea, and gaming — the last being the primary focus of her work. She has bylines in PCGamesN, NME, and more. In 2023, her essay “Virtual Progress: A Disabled Journalist’s Thoughts on the Video Games Industry” was published in Singapore’s first printed disability studies anthology, “Not Without Us: Perspective on Disabilities and Inclusion in Singapore.” She writes in hopes of offering community and catharsis. Find her @sherlisass on social media.
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“Did you tell your siblings my medication costs about $1,000 SGD [$783] per day, before subsidies?” I texted my dad a couple of months back. It had been years since his elder brother and sister had seen me. As fate would have it, I was due for phenol and steroid…
When you’re living with SMA, you quickly learn that you cannot function without someone else’s help. One of my earliest memories is of a nurse telling me that she’d asked doctors to remove my nasogastric tube for me. I must’ve been 3 at the time. My parents weren’t…
Taylor Swift, the light of my life, the one artist who’s gotten me through all my toughest eras, once wrote: “So make the friendship bracelets/ Take the moment and taste it/ You’ve got no reason to be afraid.” I took that advice last month. Well, except for…
“Sherry, did you forget about your evening medication yesterday?” my caregiver asked as she held up a plastic bag with a vitamin pill and painkillers. It was Feb. 17, the day after I attended an Ed Sheeran concert with my brother Gabriel. In response, my faced looked like that…
One of the hardest aspects of the SMA journey is a loss of independence. If I reach back into the deepest depths of my memory, the first time I can recall this happening was when I started using straws as a child. My mum had noticed I was having…
I was apprehensive when I was wheeled into my neurologist’s clinic on Jan. 18. I had taken my last dose of Evrysdi (risdiplam), a life-changing oral treatment that can improve motor function in SMA patients, during the last week of September. That was four months ago. “Why…
I used to have this bracelet I loved. My dad bought it for me on a whim on my 16th birthday. We were walking through a high-end department store where he spotted a Swarovski counter. He immediately went up to the salesperson and said, “I want to find something for…
Secretly, I usually dread this time of year. To borrow from singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, December is, to me, a “problem child.” It’s not easy to exist inside of this contradictory month, a time of both celebration and solemnity, of looking backward and forward. My birthday and…
In retrospect, my girlfriend must’ve been laughing at the ridiculous glee in my texts. “DISABILITY REPRESENTATION!” I practically shrieked at her, my fingers almost tripping over my keyboard. We were watching the first of the three 60th-anniversary “Doctor Who” specials together, though we live time zones apart.
If you asked me to describe the metaphorical status of games journalism this year, I’d say we’ve descended into carnage. Is that melodramatic? Perhaps. But journalism is a competitive field. When it’s subject to publications and departments closing, mass layoffs, and budget cuts, as it was this year, journalists struggle…
One thing I’ve learned from not going through Singapore’s formal education system is this: When it’s time to be a working adult, to earn your keep, it’s incredibly hard to persuade someone to hire you if you have a blank résumé. Everyone has to start somewhere to gain employment,…
To say Facebook Inc.’s rebrand as Meta Platforms Inc. was controversial would be an understatement. The company’s pivot from being a social media company to a “metaverse” company — essentially, one that focuses on integrating virtual worlds with “real life” — was mocked across the…
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